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BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAIT CYCLOPEDIA

church. At fourteen he was made Sabbath-school superintendent, and delivered his first address before the County Sabbath-school association or convention. At the age of fifteen he was elected exhorter, and when sixteen years of age preached his first sermon. At seventeen years of age he received license to preach regularly from the Pittsburg Conference of the Evangelical Association, now known as the United Evangelical church. At twenty he entered upon his first regular pastorate in northeastern Ohio, and continued for eleven years consecutively in active work. He then took a vacation for a year, being at the time located at Oil City, Pennsylvania. On account of the illness of the pastor of the church at Johnstown, following the great flood, he was called to the pastorate of the church now known as Trinity United Evangelical church, where he remained for about fifteen months. Later he served the congregation at East Conemaugh for one year, and the Morrellville congregation for six months.     In January, 1891, Rev. Weaver established the Johnstown Evangelist, a parish paper, and continued its publication for fifteen months. Its sphere of usefulness was limited to the congregation in whose interests it was published, and the editor, believing there was a broad field for a non-sectarian religious newspaper, discontinued the publication of the Evangelist and founded The Theocrat, primarily in the interests of good government, and incidentally of all reforms tending to that end, among them church unity, Sabbath observance and temperance. The success of the venture has been fairly good, considering the depression in business matters. The Theocrat occupies a field distinctively its own, and the prospects of extended usefulness, as a reward of its editor's persevering efforts, are very good.

Rev. Weaver was married June 1, 1881, to Miss Martha M. Moody. This estimable lady is a daughter of Rev. William Moody, of Westmoreland county. To this union have been born the following children: George W.; Olive B.; Iva May; Florence Ethel, deceased; Stanley Hamer; and Luther Dow, deceased.     Editor Weaver is the founder of "The Theocrat Press Association," and, though engaged in the newspaper business, finds time to do much pulpit work in response to the frequent demands of his brother ministers, and also spends some time in the lecture field. He retains his situation as a minister in regular standing of the Pittsburg conference of the United Evangelical church. DAVID W. BRENDLINGER, one of the most prominent citizens of Morrellville, was born September 20, 1837, in East Wheatfield township, Indiana county, Pennsylvania.     Frederick Brendlinger, grandfather of David, was a native of Burtenheim, Germany, whence he was brought to this country by his parents when but a child. The family first located at Fredericksburg, Maryland, later coming to Indiana county, this State. They were pioneers in the settlement, which was almost wholly composed of Germans. West Wheatfield was then a wilderness. Both the grandfather and the great-grandfather engaged in farming, clearing land in the virgin forests for agricultural purposes. Both died there, the latter at the age of eighty-eight years. Grandfather Brendlinger was born December 4, 1812, and died January 19, 1891. He was reared on the old homestead, and lived there until about forty years of age. He was an expert millwright, and worked in Cambria county until about 1885, when he went to Dover,

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